Chloe's Vegan Desserts by Chloe Coscarelli

"Go ahead and lick the spoon — there are no worries when you bake vegan!" As a guilty spoon-licker myself, reading this made me laugh out loud. I had to concede the point. These are the exact same decadent, caramel-drizzled, chocolatey, creamy desserts we know and love, but made without a single egg or drop of dairy milk entering the picture. Chloe Coscarelli won Food Network's Cupcake Wars with her vegan Chocolate Orange Cupcakes (yes, the recipe is in the book!), and with Chloe's Vegan Desserts, she shows us that cupcakes are just the tip of the iceberg.

• Other highlights: I really love how approachable this book is. There are no tricks or bizarre-sounding ingredients that require trekking to a specialty store. There are really so many fantastic vegan ingredients available to us these days as compared to even just a few years ago, from good-quality vegan shortening to coconut cream (which makes a fantastic whipped cream!). Once you get familiar with a few of these ingredient substitutions, making a batch of cupcakes is...just like making any other batch of cupcakes. Vegan baking?! Pffft! No biggie!

Chloe stays pretty close to traditional with these recipes, which is great if you've been craving a really good chocolate chip cookie ever since you went vegan. These are the flavors and textures that are familiar to us and dearly loved. This said, I also appreciate the times when Chloe gives us a little wink with somehting unexpected. I think her idea for Banana Bread Cobblers is brilliant, and you can bet I'll be trying out her recipe for Rosemary Ice Cream with Blueberry Sauce as soon as the blueberries start coming in.

• Who would enjoy this book? Vegans! Though I have a feeling that even non-vegans would still perk up at many of these recipes.

Find the book at your local library, independent bookstore, or Amazon: Chloe's Vegan Desserts by Chloe Coscarelli

Apartment Therapy Media makes every effort to test and review products fairly and transparently. The views expressed in this review are the personal views of the reviewer and this particular product review was not sponsored or paid for in any way by the manufacturer or an agent working on their behalf. However, the manufacturer did give us the product for testing and review purposes.